Outside Chance. After years in and around the criminal justice system , students find that their best hope for staying off the streets and in school is to get support, especially from other students who are making the same transition. Photographs by Ed Carre ó n He’s a community college counselor who specializes in students more conventionally known as “lost causes.” They come from the streets, from drug addiction, from juvenile halls, and prisons. And, like Noel Gomez , Ed.M. ’06, their lives started in poverty in communities that share more in common with war-torn developing nations than most people’s notions of America.
Some of them are one strike shy of life in prison. Yet there they were on a cloudless day in January in a conference room with the hint of an ocean view on the campus of Santa Barbara City College (SBCC), swapping heartbreaking stories but still laughing, still inspired to move forward. He can still hardly believe he got into Harvard, let alone graduated with a master’s. About the TEAMS/AmeriCorps Fellowship Program. CapellaInspires's Channel. Teaching for America. Spring 2010 Illustration: Randall Enos By Barbara Miner Most Teach for America recruits are idealistic and dedicated.
But who is behind the organization, and does its approach bolster or hinder urban education reform? It is late at night, foggy and misty, and road construction has forced me off the interstate into downtown St. I am driving from Milwaukee to St. As my thoughts wander, I try to regain focus: I am writing a story about Teach for America and education reform, not the abandonment of low-income communities of color. Two weeks later, back in Milwaukee after scores of interviews with TFA teachers and staff and with non-TFA educators and policy makers, I am still groping towards an understanding of the organization. But what exactly is TFA’s role in these education wars? Twenty years ago, Princeton University senior Wendy Kopp came up with her solution to low achievement: a Peace-Corps-type initiative called Teach for America. On the Ground in St. While in St. St. Alternative Education for Teachers Gaining Ground.
Www.doleta.gov/youth_services/pdf/AE_Overview_Text.pdf. March 2011. I am very proud to announce, gentle reader, some good news: 6 of our graduating seniors were just admitted to UCLA.
If that doesn't sound like many, consider that it is over 10% of the class. Suddenly we don't look like such a failing school after all, as long as you never step into a freshman English class. When I breathlessly shared this news with my Mom, her response was (in kinder terms), how the hell is the same school that produces students who think it's acceptable to write an essay in text-message format also producing UCLA-calibur students?
It's an interesting question, and when boiled down to the skeleton, it becomes this: given the same environment, why do some succeed while others fail? I don't pretend to know the answer to this question; it seems to fall into that mysterious category of inter-individual variation that we see in any biological community. Holding income, family background, and so on constant, some students just seem to "get" school better than others. Seven stories of real Teach for America corps members. Georgetown University Offers College Course On Jay-Z. Washington – Michael Eric Dyson parses Jay-Z's lyrics as if analyzing fine literature.
The rapper's riffs on luxury cars and tailored clothes and boasts of being the "Mike Jordan of recording" may make for catchy rhymes, but to Dyson, they also reflect incisive social commentary. Dyson, a professor, author, radio host and television personality, has offered at Georgetown University this semester a popular -- if unusual -- class dedicated to Jay-Z and his career. The course, "Sociology of Hip Hop: Jay-Z," may seem an unlikely offering at a Jesuit, majority-white school that counts former President Bill Clinton among its alumni. But Dyson insists that his class confronts topics present in any sociology course: racial and gender identity, sexuality, capitalism and economic inequality. "It just happens to have an interesting object of engagement in Jay-Z -- and what better way to meet people where they are? " "I think he's an icon of American excellence," Dyson said.
But others have concerns. Why Harvard Students Should Study More Religion.